


Citius, Altius, Fortius

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Marriage, Party, Rio olympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7754128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rio Olympics 2016 Opening Ceremony-- you're invited to Jed & Mary's for a very belated housewarming and a night of bossa nova and bad cable commentators!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Citius, Altius, Fortius

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BroadwayBaggins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BroadwayBaggins/gifts).



“I am going on the record, right now, I expect they’ll play “Girl from Ipanema” within the first hour, maybe even the first half hour,” Jed announced. Mary made a non-committal sound because it wasn’t that big a reach for the Rio Games and also because she was fiddling with a tray of hors d’oeuvres in the oven. Fine, they were mini bagel bites but she was going to call them hors d’oeuvres and blame it on French being the other official language of the Olympics. She didn’t think she could get away with it for the pigs in a blanket though. No one would care—everyone loved pigs in a blanket.

“Foster, you proposing a drinking game or something?” Samuel called from the sofa where he was nursing a cider. Only Emma was on-call tonight and it was telephone call, where the chances of getting called in for a consult were pretty slim, so everyone else would have a libation, or more than one, of their choice. Jed was dry as always but had decided a virgin mojito was too much like mouthwash and decided to stick with Diet Coke. Mary envied him his amazing ability to fall asleep whenever he wanted and thus his ability to drink caffeinated beverages whenever he wanted. Or at all. She was four months’ pregnant with their first child, so she’d be chugging water all night unless she caved to the constant offers of milk. Unless Lisette really did bring horchata as she had promised; she’d been post-call and might not remember.

“Diggs, you may be onto something. But the announcers have been so bad, we might need to expand it to include the requisite sexist baloney they are likely to default to. Or just how much they talk about Phelps. You and Emma get started making a list. I have to text Henry back, he and Lisette managed to get lost and he still won’t trust a GPS app. They might end up in Revere.”

Mary looked through the pass-through the realtor had insisted would make entertaining “so much easier, you’ll love it” and saw Samuel and Emma immediately set to work; Emma was tapping away at her phone and Mary expected there would be a bulleted list with subheadings by the time she got the crudité and dip on the coffee table. You could take the chief residents out of the hospital… 

“What else? This was your brainstorm, remember?” she asked Jed who was leaning against the wall, texting insouciantly. Well, consciously insouciantly, largely to make her smile.

“Um, hang on. The flags are up,” she nodded. They’d spent forty-five minutes decorating the “great room” with various countries’ flags which fortunately ended with her directing him from the sofa, ostensibly to rest but mostly to ogle a still sweaty Jed in running clothes he’d postponed changing out of when he thought he could hang approximately twenty-seven flags in ten minutes. It was a sweet view and she appreciated having her feet up, so win-win. “All the drinks, well, everything except that weird double strength ginger beer Henry likes that he’s bringing, are chilling and the food is all ready, and the medals are too, right?” They had made a series of gold, silver and bronze medals out of craft supplies from Michael’s that Jed planned to give up based on some elaborate equation Mary had not been willing to devote neurons to mastering. 

“I think we’re good to go, we just have to wait for the rest of them to get here. Aurelia and Clay said they were coming, but Clay asked if he could bring his cousin Byron and I said yes,” Jed said, giving her the hopeful smile he saved for the times he was afraid she would figuratively knock his block off.

“Well, Charlotte is bringing Anne,” Jed groaned softly, a familiar sound that Mary, Samuel and Emma all ignored, “so I’m not one to talk. I know, she’s a pain and she’s going to want to talk about the Brexit all night, but I feel sorry for her. Her grant got cut and the rumor is Dr. Johnson is leaving and then she won’t have a faculty supervisor,” Mary said. It was a pity—the combination of Anne’s situation and how generally unpleasant she was, so that it was nearly impossible to sympathize. Anne was vulnerable and sincere and nice about fourteen percent of the time and she and Mary had been on PICU together as interns which bonded them in some strange, horrible, traumatic way, so she was invited to their parties more often than not.

“Ok, whatever. You’ve had the Jobim station on all day so I’m feeling mellow. I think we did forget something though,” Jed said, ambling around the kitchen. The countertops were Formica and they were waiting to replace the cabinet doors until they paid off her Subaru, but it was a friendly room with great dimensions and a big window over the sink into the backyard. Mary thought she would miss the hand-painted tiles with strawberries on them when they finally redid it. The car payments and the nursery were the priority now but she was calmer about that since her mom had given her the antique maple rocker and Jed had not insisted on a Finding Nemo/Dory theme.

“What?” Mary asked.

He’d agreed she could be Canada, since she had a decent collection of maple-leaf emblazoned garb from her semester at McGill even though he had asserted, “With the amount of pasta you are putting away, Italy would have made more sense,” but he’d softened it by dumping another enormous helping of fettuccini alfredo on her plate as he said it. He was America, of course, and Samuel and Emma were Germany and Japan. She couldn’t remember everyone else’s choices, except that Aurelia was Brazil since she was the only native Portuguese speaker at the party and had agreed to translate anything the regular commentators failed at. 

“Don’t you mean, ‘what, eh?’” he said and then quickly took her in his arms, missing her mouth with his but catching her cheek on the way to her neck, the arc of her clavicle her neckline revealed. He grazed her breast on the way to caressing her slightly thickened belly and she whispered, “Later, I hear them at the front door.”

“Fine. I hate it when my Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony viewing party derails my larger priorities,” she raised an eyebrow as he had glanced at her more impressive bosom and wider waistline, “But you’re right, they’re at the door and I think, Christ! They brought Jimmy, he’s got such a black cloud, I hope he doesn’t make all the pagers go off at once.”

He walked to the front door ahead of her, letting her straighten out her untucked shirt, liberally spangled with red maple leaves over a matching red maternity tank top, and glanced down at where Mary expected at least a regulation size basketball belly to be by Thanksgiving and mouthed “Simone?” and winked. The oven timer pinged so she shoved the lime green mitts back on to pull out a cookie sheet of mozzarella sticks and heard Jed’s voice greeting the rest of the party, 

“Welcome to the 2016 Rio Olympics! And yes, Anne, I agree the Brexit was a woeful decision likely to return England to the Dark Ages. Would you like a mini bagel bite? Ah, Jimmy, Tajikistan, inspired choice. Come on in.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, getting into the Olympics groove and not wanting to have to do much actual research on sports, I wrote this instead. But I think it's fairly fun and I managed to get Simone Biles and Simone Manuel (queens of awesomeness!) into the story although I left out Gisele Bundchen's lame last runway walk at the opening ceremony. As it should be. The title is the Olympic motto, in Latin, for extra class :)


End file.
